My new Media Center Pc

Yes I may have messed up there Dave, but @ £12 you cant go wrong ;) was dumb when I have 4 SATA ports on my motherboard, just not that up on the Pc construction as I thought I was, should have just got another 80Gb Sata drive, oh well only time will tell (Could always buy one, still time).....
1.5Tb would have been a lot of storage mate, I know there "Aint no subsitute for cubic inches" in Computer memory land but thats a little too high :LOL: I doubt I'll fully utilize the 500Gb I'll have, after all I've only got about 40Gb of music at the moment, ok the video files will take up some room, but most of them will be hard-copied to disc so that will save some space.

Oh the fan for the RAM came today looks great,fits over the top and has three 40mm fans built into it.
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Its not going to be very quiet with all those fans....

"Terminal 4, Heathrow, this is flight ZA-132, requesting permission to take off.."
 
Alex_16v said:
Its not going to be very quiet with all those fans....

"Terminal 4, Heathrow, this is flight ZA-132, requesting permission to take off.."
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Depends, my PC hs loads of fans, but they're all in sync with each other and have speed controllers on them.
 
ginja said:
1.5Tb would have been a lot of storage mate, I know there "Aint no subsitute for cubic inches" in Computer memory land but thats a little too high :LOL:
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Oh, my 8.5TB is possibly a bit overkill :D:D:D

Still - looks sweet and I'm sure it'll do the job :)

We have one of these tiny acer PCs under our 46" LCDTV in the lounge:

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Alex_16v said:
Its not going to be very quiet with all those fans....

"Terminal 4, Heathrow, this is flight ZA-132, requesting permission to take off.."
Click to expand...
They are all controled by the Motherboard BIOS mate, it has AMD's Cool & Quiet Technology only gonna be about 20db or so <max 30db> plus the two case fans and the PSU fan are "silent" ones (Case fans are controled by temperature sensors via the digital display)

I know some Pc's can be noisy, i've just reduced the fan noise on this one i'm typing on using speed reducing cables (mind you the last cable I got from Maplins was wired totaly wrong, + to Positive and - to positive too):skep: soon sorted that out, not exactly quiet but its ok to say it has 5 fans (if you include the 80mm CPU,80mm System, 40mm GPU and 2x 60mm on the rear)....plus i'm sure there is one in the PSU
 
DaveH said:
Oh, my 8.5TB is possibly a bit overkill :D:D:D

Still - looks sweet and I'm sure it'll do the job :)

We have one of these tiny acer PCs under our 46" LCDTV in the lounge:

acer-aspire-l3600-desktop-pc.jpg
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(y) nice I guess that runs through your 46" Tv? My mate has one of them little Media player HDD's under his large LCD Tv, keeps all his movies and music videos on it. I'd have a larger Tv but as its only going in my bedroom at the moment :)o I still live at home:eek:) 28" will be big enough (think the one I'm going for is actualy 26" and about £179, its £100 more for the 28" variant)
 
ginja said:
(y) nice I guess that runs through your 46" Tv? My mate has one of them little Media player HDD's under his large LCD Tv, keeps all his movies and music videos on it. I'd have a larger Tv but as its only going in my bedroom at the moment :)o I still live at home:eek:) 28" will be big enough (think the one I'm going for is actualy 26" and about £179, its £100 more for the 28" variant)
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Yeah its hooked up via DVI to the TV and via Optical to the surround sound :)

It does have wireless but we ran a network cable downstairs so that we can use the upstairs storage rather than worry about space on the tiny thing :) We donated the monitor to my brother as he was still using a brick monitor!
 
Wi-Fi is miles faster then HSDPA imo

As for the monitor i'd go as big as you can afford lol, i had a 50" in my bedroom when i lived at home all hooked to the PC surround sound, PS3 etc.

Alls thats now in my living room in my apartment though

Looks a nice bit of kit though dude :cool:
 
p.whitelock said:
Good idea Matt, and nice work. Have you considered a HSDPA dongle for mobile internet? Probably alot better than wi-fi?
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I'm considering getiing one of them for my Netbook yes but not the home system

Yeah Matt I'd get a bigger one, just trying to save a bit of money, have considered 32" as the largest. Was just thinking of this SONY deal were you take your old Tv in as trade and they give you a discount? As Long as I can connect via HDMi i think it will be ok (thing is most LCD Tv's arn't as "Quick" as LCD monitors, and text dont look right)
 
Well I finally got the parts I was after (no thanks to the posty....lost in transit) have even had to buy new security as that is missing in action too :( (refund time me-thinks)

Anyway i was waiting for two IDE to SATA converters for one of my HDD's and the DVD-drive, only small little circuit boards but allow me to save space in the case by using SATA cable instead of old style flat IDE cable (I couldn't wire up the DVD & the HDD as the cable wouldn't fit in the space available)
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Nice bit of SATA Cable Spaghetti anyone ;)
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Still got the Drives connected then fitted the RAM cooler as stated earlier (quite a good looking bit of kit) to cool those RAM chips down when its running HOT! HOT! :ihih:
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Although as you can see there is a lot of air space around the CPU (plus there will be another fan with a duct above the cooler)
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Just a couple of pics of the connections on the back: 4x USB2, Network, 7.1 Audio, Keyboard/Mouse & vent for North-bridge cooler.
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Graphics card, showing analogue and DVi sockets, Free-view card showing twin aerial sockets, and PC Card reader (for the Wi-Fi lap-top card)
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Now all the components are fitted I can get the O/S loaded and fire it up (especially as I've just got myself some brand new security) just hope it works :sosp::sosp::rolleyes5: :confused:
 
Couple of up-dates:

Finaly decided it was about time I switched the thing on, and guess what it worked ;)
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Power and motherboard LED's came on and the Fans started spinning on the CPU, RAM cooler and Graphics card.
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The digital display lights up also with a welcome message from the case manufacturer
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I'd forgoten that the PSU was also lit up with blue LED's
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Next task was to fit the DVD-Drive bezel, a pretty easy task: You have to remove the outer drive units tray cover 1st (done before construction)
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Then the new Aluminium Bezel simply sticks to the tray with sticky tape..
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All in all very neat and tidy.

Will probably be setting up the actual internals today (changing BIOS settings and uploading Windows) so wish me luck ;)
 
Its nice Matt dont get me wrong... but I have a cheaper solution and Its HD. My xbox 360 is set up to stream off of my server via my network switch.
 
I could have done with your expert help last night mate, the O/S upload didn't work (genuine Windows Xp MCE discs*) it was as if some of the information/files were missing :confused:, it was supposed to have a SP2 disc with it, but that wasn't helping me out either, downloaded a copy of the SP2 disc onto an SD card (that took about an hour even over broadband....sheesh, think it was because I was copying it direct to the SD card not the computer memory) but even that didn't help, it was if the O/s was pre SP1 or something or just a well packaged fraud copy :(
I'm going to hopefully be getting a copy of Xp Pro off my mate tonight so I guess its a case of re-format and reload :mad2:

*all got proper holographic coating etc.

all the hardware checks out fine, the HDD's work and the motherboard BIOS reckognizes everything:nonod:
 
ginja said:
it was supposed to have a SP2 disc with it
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Most XP setup CDs include SP2 these days, therefore you install XP and SP2 is already there. So no need to run an SP2 setup after installing the OS and no extra disk required.

I'd try resetting the BIOS to optimum defaults (but check the boot order - your DVD should be first and the 80Gb HDD second) and then try the Media Centre install again. Make sure you wipe any existing disk partitions when the setup gets to the appropriate stage and format a new one on your 80Gb disk.(y)
 
ok I'm officaly not happy now, tried to download Windows Media player 11 and the Microsoft website informed me in no unsertain terms that my copy of Windows Xp MCE wasn't genuine so it wouldn't download! That would explain why stuff hasn't been working properly....a case of back to the drawing board, its a good job i've not actually up-loaded any of my Media or i'd be in stum!
 
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